In 2003 I was enrolled in a class taught by Vanalyne Green called “The Personal Essay Film.” I had recently fallen in love with Vanalyne—like you do when you’re an angry teenager having your entire worldview destabilized—after watching her essay film about how she got herpes from a hot cowboy that looked like the Marlboro Man. The day’s viewing was Sink or Swim by Su Friedrich. I didn’t have the words then to articulate the splendor, the darkness, the gentle wisdom of this film. But now I do.
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A hallmark of documentary films is the use of preexisting material incorporated by filmmakers to tell their story. For instance, Michael Moore’s
Dear Readers, After 22 ½ years as Editor of Documentary magazine, I have decided to step down. On September 10, 2001, I was on a flight from Boston to
At first glance, the story of the landmark 1961 desegregation case Taylor vs. Board of Education, which originated in New Rochelle, New York, might not seem like obvious material for a white, Los Angeles-based theater director-writer-actor to tackle for her feature doc debut. But then, Arden Teresa Lewis happens to be a native of New Rochelle—once dubbed the "Little Rock of the North”—and her childhood was shaped by a diverse community whose grassroots demand for change had led all the way to the US Supreme Court.
Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen’s In Her Hands follow the unlikeliest of protagonists, with a backstory that practically begs for Hollywood to
Dear Readers, For me, the biennial Getting Real conference has been such a rich and rewarding well of ideas, issues, and themes to draw from, as I
It was around 2005 and I stared at the TV screen in my parent's living room in awe. The credits for Tarnation—directed, produced, and edited by
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Sami Khan ( St. Louis Superman) and immersive producer-sound artist-director Michael Gassert’s POV-premiering (October 3
Winner of the Directing Award for US Documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Reid Davenport’s debut feature, I Didn’t See You There, is
For tourists, the Philippine island of Palawan is a tropical paradise. For illegal loggers, it’s a place to plunder one of the last great rainforests